Tackling homophobia at school.

"There were grown men in the audience with tears in their eyes," says a previewer of Debra Chasnoff's new documentary, Don't Look the Other Way. Chasnoff caught the attention of the nation on the Academy Awards a few years ago, accepting Best Short Documentary honors for her expose of General Electric, while publicly thanking her lesbian partner and their son.

Her new project is aimed at preventing homophobia among elementary-school students. It's a huge undertaking, but the mixture of talent and compassion Chasnoff brings to her work makes her the right person for the job.

"This project emerged for two reasons," Chasnoff says. "One was that my oldest son was getting to be school age. I was wanting to do something for him and all the other kids about influencing the messages they're getting about different kinds of families and gay people.

"But the other thing that did it for me was watching the Republican Convention in 1992. Pat Robertson was running on this platform of blatant homophobia and I thought, `Where have we come as a country that someone can run for President and his basic platform is that gay people should be locked up?' It terrified me. Someone like Pat Robertson is a lost cause, but what about people who are just forming their attitudes?"

As an involved parent at her son's school, Chasnoff has made first-hand observations of children's budding attitudes. "Kids form their attitudes about gay people while they're in elementary school. They're getting input from the media and on the playground, but no adults are sitting them down and telling them the truth--that gay people exist and they are entitled to respect as much as anyone else," she says.

The project Chasnoff undertook with co-producer Helen Cohen and Chasnoff's nonprofit film company, Women's Educational Media, has been fraught with complications due to the touchy subject matter.

"We set off to produce a series of videos that would be for classroom use, and we're doing that," says Chasnoff. "But we ran across scores of gay and straight educators who said, `You're absolutely right, this is a really crucial issue, but there's no way I can say the word "lesbian" in my classroom, or I'll be fired.'

"So we decided to take a big step backward and produce a documentary that demystifies what it means to do anti-bias education that's inclusive of lesbian and gay people. The film clarifies what it looks like to talk to kids in kindergarten through eighth grade in age-appropriate lessons."

Why is confronting this issue so important in our schools? "When kids are allowed to use anti-gay names, that sends a very powerful message about what group in society is allowed to be demeaned," Chasnoff says.

Her documentary shows parents and teachers that discussions about lesbians and gays don't have to be awkward and uncomfortable.

In one sequence, a kindergarten teacher reads her class a picture book about a child with two lesbian parents, then gently leads a discussion about the child's feelings. In another scene, an energetic soccer coach demonstrates to older kids--using a soccer ball--that concealing his gay identity would handicap him as certainly as trying to play soccer while hiding one of his legs behind him. The film also includes the comments of teachers and administrators, as they grapple with their own concerns over addressing this issue with children.

The series, called "Respect for All," includes the documentary with a resource guide for educators, and three fifteen-minute, age-appropriate videos for the classroom: "My Family Is Special," "Don't Call Me That," and "Shattering Stereotypes."

Chasnoff hopes her work will be part of a fundamental shift in how people address homophobia with young children.

"It's alliance-building. We're speaking to heterosexual parents and teachers. I feel like we're opening up the possibilities of changing what the next generations of kids are taught in school," she says. For further information, contact Women's Educational Media, [phone]; e-mail: [e-mail].